Depending on who you ask, somewhere between $2 trillion and $16 trillion in assets will move onchain by 2030. McKinsey lands near the low end, BCG near the high end. Even the small number is one of the biggest new markets in a generation.
The assets exist. The demand is there. So why is it still so hard for a bank, a wallet or a fintech to actually offer any of it?
Because "add onchain yield" looks like one line on a roadmap, and that line hides about a year of work.
Picture a team that just wants to let customers earn on their balance. Easy, on paper. Then they start building, and the easy feature becomes a second job.
First they pick a protocol. One is never enough, because rates move and liquidity dries up, so soon they are juggling three or four and deciding which to trust on any given day.
Then the signing. Every action is a transaction that has to be built exactly right and approved by the customer. When something is off, it does not show a friendly error. It quietly loses money.
Then gas. Someone has to pay the network fee, so the team ends up asking customers to go buy ETH first, which is where most of them give up.
Then eligibility. Half the good assets are only available in some countries, so now there is a rulebook to keep as well.
And under all of it, the ground keeps moving. Protocols change, markets shift, and last quarter's feature needs constant babysitting just to keep working.
None of that is the product. All of it is why the product is late, and it is not a one-time cost. The same team pays it again for the next feature, and the one after that.
Here is the part that matters. This invisible middle is where the market gets won. Not by the cleverest protocol, but by whoever gets a good product in front of customers first, and then keeps shipping.
That is why Compass Labs exists. One integration gives an app earning, borrowing, trading and tokenized assets, with the risk and rate data underneath. We are non-custodial infrastructure: the customer approves and signs from their own wallet, and you keep your brand, your customers and your margin. Your team goes back to shipping one line on the roadmap, except this time it works.
The best onchain products of the next few years will not come from the teams with the most crypto engineers. They will come from the teams that never had to become a crypto company at all.
That is the part we build.
Ready to build?
Start at docs.compasslabs.ai, or talk to us at compasslabs.ai.
Sources. Market-size estimates: McKinsey, "From ripples to waves: The transformational power of tokenizing assets" (June 2024), roughly $2 trillion tokenized by 2030 in the base case; BCG and ADDX, "Asset tokenization to grow into a $16 trillion opportunity by 2030" (2022).